They Need a Miracle!

June 23, 2013June 23, 2013

If there is one thing I have noticed about the reprobate, is they feel that if God would just do this one thing for them as an individual, they would believe. This makes one question if the onus of believing in God is truly on man.

Mat 12:38-39
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;

What I have noticed in the charismatic school of thought is besides the: cast your troubles on the Lord and claim your healing; I have observed that when a guest charismatic preacher comes in to share the Word at another charismatic body, this preacher will not be in a frenzied state like charismatic body he has visited. This preacher may act just like them in his home charismatic setting but it makes me wonder how the charismatics define ‘filled with the Spirit’ because it seems that these preachers subconsciously know that they can either settle for the so called ‘spirit filled’ tongue speaking, yelling, clapping and dancing frenzy or sit quietly in the presence of His Majesty and preach the Spirit breathed Word. These preachers know subconsciously that they cannot do both. Why? Well, that is question that remains unanswered only to the charasmatics. It seems that being ‘Spirit filled’ has no connection with ‘Christ likeness’ to these charasmatics, as for me I would find it blasphemous to even associate the charismatic definition of ‘spirit filled’ with ‘Christ likeness’. Yes and I have noticed among this section that they like sketches of where Jesus is portrayed as rather jovial. This makes me wonder if these people ever took note of Isaiah 53:3, which speaking of Christ says that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted in grief. In fact in John 8:57, the Jews told Jesus that He was not yet 50 years old, when He would have been only about 33 years in his human age at that time. He truly was the Lamb of God (John 1:29) who bore the sins of the world.

The solution for man is not in meeting His every need but in being put right with His Creator. If it were ever so that man’s need were to be first met before any initiation of relationship between him and God, then one needs to see man’s belief as being conditional, which itself does not reflect the essence of belief and subjection to an Almighty God. In the Bible, many a times Jesus has said to people while healing them, your faith has saved you. You will notice in most of these cases, that these people subjected themselves to Him and His majesty. What is faith? It is not asking desperately or demanding with confidence in any way. It is seeing yourself under the behest of God. When Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, he received the knowledge of good and evil, which actually is, he received a new standard i.e. death because it was separate from the righteousness of God. It is for this reason that man independently chooses right from wrong though the Word of God may teach otherwise on that same issue. So faith is that where you humble yourself in the presence of the living God. God is already exalted and we cannot exalt Him any further but by His Spirit working in us we can deny ourselves the self righteous pride Adam gave us. This way we humble ourselves before Him, saying we are but sinners deserving of nothing but His justice and this is faith because to deny feeding our appetites and see ourselves for who we are before God, is how we truly prostrate before His Majesty.

Mat 15
21 Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon.22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.”23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us.”24 But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!”26 And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”27 But she said, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”28 Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at once.

Psalms 51
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

When we look at the Israelites in the Book of Exodus, we see that they were a people who witnessed many miracles, yet it is recorded of them that they grumbled and sought to go back to Egypt. Now this nature is not peculiar to the Israelite people, this is what human nature is. We want to feel warm in the winters, cool in the summer and dry in the monsoon, there never reaches a point of satisfaction. This is what man’s fallen nature is about! However for a believer, His satisfaction is only in His relationship with Christ, he does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mat 4:4). Will such a state ever be possible with man? Never by man (Mat 19:26)! But for the elect in Christ, who have RECEIVED a birth in His Spirit, they have also received a righteousness which is of God and so obedience to God is made possible only to the Christian. As for the reprobate, they never realize that satisfaction can only be found in a relationship with God and this does not even matter to them because they are dead in the spirit, owing to Adam; so they do not have, neither can they initiate communion with God by themselves.

To a reprobate man, it is always a miracle that he feels will satisfy him to bring him to belief but if this man were to question his desire and reason to materialize this miracle, it will in most cases seem that he chooses only to further his lust and excuse himself from subjection under God. This is the death that pervades through all the children of Adam. To these people, faith is nothing more than one’s hunger to make it big in life, which is nothing more than the highlight of audacious self righteousness in seeking pride, craving for power and lustful pleasure (1 John 2:16), that Adam took on in death to pass on to all his children. However scripture states that we have nothing more than what we have been given, in fact even the beasts of the Book of Revelation have no more power than what God has given them to meet His purpose of threshing the wheat from the chaff.

To conclude, what a man needs is not a miracle to set his life straight but he needs to receive Jesus Christ in the Spirit according to the will of God and never according to the will of man (John 1:12-13).